Zander seeks instant reply

Photo: Max Flego

DOWN AND OUT: Athletic midfielder Carl Winchester sinks to his knees at the end of Saturday’s npower League One defeat at Colchester United.

U’s hammering ‘hard to take’
DEFENDER Zander Diamond admitted Athletic failed to deal with Colchester’s attacking threat as the club reeled from a battering at the Weston Homes Community Stadium.

Goals in the opening seconds of both halves from Anthony Wordsworth and Ian Henderson, and a disputed penalty from Wordsworth just before the interval sucker-punched the visitors, who were seemingly heading for half-time on level terms thanks to Reuben Reid’s fourth penalty of the season.

A Matt Heath header from a corner added to Athletic’s misery, as they failed to add to a run of two successive victories in npower League One.

“You look to block crosses coming in, but Colchester got a lot of two-on-ones down the line and worked the ball well,” said Diamond, who has taken the captain’s armband in the absence of injured regular skipper Dean Furman.

“If you don’t stop the first ball in then you need to stop it in the box. We did neither and paid the price.

“It is a hard one to take and left us with a long journey back up the road.

“We need to dust ourselves down now. We have got a massive week ahead of us with Huddersfield coming to town, so we can’t feel sorry for ourselves.

“It was important to get points on the board quickly after losing our first two and we managed to do that.

“We bounced back from it and hopefully we can do so again, but talk is cheap and we have to do it on the pitch.

“Hopefully come five o’clock on Saturday we are celebrating three points.”

Diamond felt particularly aggrieved about the penalty Athletic conceded after he tangled with Henderson in the area, with a referee’s assistant awarding the spot-kick after Steve Rushton had initially waved away U’s claims.

The Scot said that the explanations behind the award from the officials were inconsistent, with both a shove and a short-tug cited.

“It knocks the stuffing out of you conceding a penalty and a dubious one like that,” he added.

“We will look at it on the video but the boy ran into me and made the most of it.

“You know in this game if the referee gives a penalty one way, the old cliché is that he is going to even it up.

“But he has knocked it on, he is never getting near the ball because (Alex) Cisak has come out and gathered it and the linesman has given the penalty.

“At the same time, the way we started both halves is criminal. You can’t do that and everything that was said at half-time goes out of the window straight away. No wonder the manager is upset with us.”

Already faced with a paper-thin squad, Athletic boss Paul Dickov has further difficulties naming a side for Huddersfield’s visit to Boundary Park on Saturday.

Winger Josh Parker — whose continued absence was kept under wraps by the club last week — is faced with up to eight weeks on the sidelines due to a knee injury which requires a scan this week.

Centre-back Nathan Clarke cannot play as a result of his loan arrangement, meaning a likely recall to the starting line-up for Jean-Yves Mvoto.

With Furman out injured following his knee operation Athletic will feel the loss of Carl Winchester, who is away with Northern Ireland’s under-21s, ruling him out of the cross-Pennines clash.

David Mellor can also be labelled a doubtful at this stage. The 18-year-old midfielder was brought off the field at Colchester after half an hour, seemingly not fully over the illness which kept him out of first-team training sessions up until Thursday last week.